comparative advantage
Noun
Meaning
English Wikipedia has an article on:comparative advantageWikipedia
comparative advantage (countable and uncountable, plural comparative advantages)
(economics) The ability to produce a particular good at a lower relative opportunity cost than another producer.
Antonym: absolute advantage
Examples
The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist - a skill which he shares with many other scientists, but in which he has perhaps a certain comparative advantage.
Litmus test: If you can't describe Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage and explain why people find it counterintuitive, you don't know enough about economics to direct any criticism or praise at "capitalism" because you don't know what other people are referring to when they use that word.
In many societies the domestic social costs of adjustment to changing patterns of comparative advantage are believed to outweigh the advantages of further trade liberalization.
In a world where technology and capital are highly transferable, there is a real risk that comparative advantage comes to be defined as whose labor force will work for the lowest wage.
Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.
Even Ricardo's most famous accomplishment, the law of comparative advantage in foreign trade, is incomplete, though not wrong.